INSPIRE FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

This page is under continual development. Please feel free to send us requests for help or clarification! Our answers to frequently asked questions will be collected here.

  1. I have problems submitting information, because the "Submit" button doesn't work.

    This is either because your browser does not support JavaScript or because JavaScript has been turned off in your browser.

  2. I have requested a negotiation already. When can I start my negotiation?

    Your negotiation will be set up typically within 2-3 days. INSPIRE will notify you via e-mail (specifying your negotiation name and user name), after which you can start your negotiation right away.

  3. I have had no response from my counterpart for several days. What shall I do?

    Since you are a representative of your organization (as described in your negotiation case), consider what other professional negotiators would do in the same situation. Send repeated messages? New offers? Can you come up with other tactics to get your counterpart to the table?

    Also, see the next question.

  4. I have had no response from my counterpart at all for a really long time and I have run out of ideas. Please help!

    First consider the possibility that this may be an intentional tactic used by your counterpart to increase the pressure as your deadline draws near.

    It does sometimes happen that a person who requested an INSPIRE negotiation fails to return to the site. So please contact the INSPIRE administrators when everything you have tried has failed to elicit any response. We will either confirm that your counterpart has not disappeared, or we will hook you up with a new counterpart.

  5. I have sent an offer and my counterpart has not yet responded to it. INSPIRE shows me a "Waiting for response" page. Can I send a second offer instead of waiting?

    Yes, you can make consecutive offers without waiting for your counterpart. Click on the "Make an offer" link in the menubar at the bottom of your page. There is also a link in the menubar that allows you to just "Send a message" instead of an offer.

  6. How do I change my preference ratings?

    You can change your preferences during an INSPIRE negotiation using the menu buttons at the bottom of your page. (e.g., the "Issue Ratings" button.) However, you can do so only before you reach your first agreement. After that, the system enters a mediation stage (post-settlement) during which it needs stable preferences in order to determine which packages can be jointly improved.

  7. If I can see my counterpart's scores on the history graph, it follows that my counterpart can see my scores, which I don't like. So INSPIRE cannot be used in real-life negotiations, can it?

    In the first place, you can't see your counterpart's ratings, nor can your counterpart see yours. The graph does show a curve for your counterpart's offers, but the curve is computed according to your preference ratings, not your counterpart's! Likewise, the score shown next to each package on the offer construction pages is computed from your own preference ratings---the score is supposed to summarize how valuable you think the package is, regardless of whether you or your counterpart offered the package to the other. Your counterpart's scores and graph will be totally different from yours since he or she will have provided a totally different set of preference ratings. In short INSPIRE never reveals your preferences to your counterpart (or your counterpart's to you) and is safe for real-life negotiations.

  8. Can I look at on-going negotiations?

    Sorry, you cannot: there are privacy issues involved. However, you can read about the negotiation process by looking at the demo.

INSPIRE Glossary

Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)
BATNA is the minimum acceptable value for a negotiated agreement. This value is determined by individual party's knowledge of the negotiated issues and options. Any offer which is higher than BATNA is better than an impasse. During the negotiation process, the compromise comes from the offer which is more attractive than both parties' BATNA.

Compromise
A compromise or agreement is the package (combination of options across all issues) that both negotiators jointly agree upon after exchanging a sequence of offers.

Configuring a negotiation
To set up each new negotiation, INSPIRE has to be provided with a minimum of three pieces of information: the unique name of the negotiation, and two user names. Currently the list of issues being negotiated must also be provided to the INSPIRE administrators before the negotiation begins. Thus a "configuration" is defined as the combination of participants and issues that constitute a particular negotiation.

Improving the joint outcome
The joint outcome is the compromise that both parties settle upon after a series of offer exchanges. INSPIRE has a post-settlement stage, during which it uses the preference information provided by each user to determine whether it is possible to construct a new offer that is better than the joint outcome for at least one party, and equally good or better than the joint outcome for the other party; this analysis is known as "improving the joint outcome."

Interpreting offer ratings
The rating displayed on an offer is computed from the preference ratings you provide in the first part of your negotiation. Remember that your counterpart's rating of a package is unlikely to be the same as yours. Your counterpart never sees the ratings that you see on a package, since what he/she sees is based on his/her initial preference ratings.
This means that the numerical difference between the ratings of two offers will not be the same as the difference in the ratings seen by your counterpart. For example, a revised offer which lowers the rating of your package by 10 points from your previous offer may only raise your counterpart's rating of that package by 3 points or may even lower your counterpart's rating.

Issue
A topic of discussion that is of particular interest in a negotiation. Each issue has a range of alternatives or options, one of which must ultimately be agreed upon by the negotiators in order to achieve a compromise.

Logrolling
A kind of trade-off between two or more decision makers: giving favours or making concessions on condition of receiving other favours.

Negotiation
While the common meaning of the term "negotiation" is well known, a Web based system such as INSPIRE needs to give it a specific technical meaning because there are multiple users conducting multiple negotiations on possibly the same or different sets of issues on the system, via a common set of Web pages which may be visited in a different order each time. To keep things organized, each "negotiation" is uniquely identified by a negotiation name, and defined as the complete sequence of interactions between INSPIRE and a particular pair of users (beginning with preference elicitation, continuing through offer exchange, reaching agreement, and ending with post-settlement analysis), on a particular set of issues. Thus, the same pair of users may conduct more than one negotiation on the same set of issues, but for each instance the negotiation name will be different.

Negotiation name
In combination with the user name, a negotiation name uniquely identifies an INSPIRE negotiation. A user can conduct multiple negotiations simultaneously on the system using different negotiation names. Unlike your user name, your negotiation name is not displayed by the system to your counterpart.

Offer
A combination of options (a package) that is sent by one negotiator to the other. In INSPIRE, an offer consists of a package plus an optional message.

Option
One of the alternative values that an issue can take. For example, the issue "Tolerable product failure rate" may have the options "3%", "5%" and "10%".

Package
A particular combination of options that has been selected across all the issues. For example,
Price 3000 $
Payment Upon delivery
Failure rate 5%
is a package.

Prenegotiation
Prenegotiation is the first phase of a negotiation. It refers to the initial period (prior to exchange of any offers) when one prepares for the negotiation. Some activities involved in this phase include problem definition, preference elicitation, and evaluation of alternative packages.

Post-settlement
A "settlement" is the same as an agreement or compromise, and "post-settlement" refers to the period after the first compromise has been achieved. (If your first compromise was not as good as INSPIRE thinks it possible for both sides to achieve, INSPIRE suggests that you continue into the post-settlement stage and try to improve your joint outcome.)

Trade-off
A trade-off is an exchange process in which a decision maker gives up partly on some issues so as to gain on other issues.

User name
This is a name used by INSPIRE during login and throughout the negotiation. Since it is the only name displayed by the system to your counterpart, you can preserve your anonymity by choosing an arbitrary user name.
In combination with the negotiation name, a user name uniquely identifies one of the two participants in a given INSPIRE negotiation. A user name is specific to a given negotiation, and can be reused in another negotiation. Thus a user name does not uniquely identify a real user (and is therefore not like a Unix login-id).

Utility function
A utility function is a subjective measurement that expresses the relative value of different package by using a numerical scale. The numerical scale used is arbitrary. It typically ranges either from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 100. The minimum number expresses the least desirable and least preferred package. The highest number represents the most desirable and preferred package.

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Last modified: Mon Sep 29 12:36:36 EDT 1997 by RM. Please send us your comments!